In the retail setting, tasks for delivering merchandise items to a customer are frequently divided between several employees within a shopping facility. For example, when a customer places an order, one employee may be responsible for identifying and locating the merchandise item from a shopping facility merchandising area (or filling the order) and then placing the merchandise item in a common employee area (binning) for pick-up by a second employee. In turn, when the customer picks up the order, the second employee may be responsible for identifying the order, locating the merchandise item within the common area, transporting the merchandise item to a cashier area, and then completing the sales transaction.
In some retail settings, this inefficient staging of merchandising items can cause some delays for customer pick-up and some frustration for both shopping facility employees and customers. Some merchandising systems require a manual binning and picking system to manage the staging of merchandise for customer pick-up. When an order filler is done identifying and gathering the merchandise item, the item may be placed into a container or bin along with other merchandise items for other customers. One container may contain numerous merchandise items for various customers. There may be some sort of system that records the container location (as there may be many such containers in the common employee area), or the binning may be handled according to an alphabetical approach or based on space availability within the containers. When the customer arrives for pick-up, the sales associate or cashier may then look up the container location for that customer's merchandise item, identify and locate the correct container, and then search within the container for the merchandise item for the applicable customer inside the container. The manual steps taken on both sides of the process (by the order filler and by the sales associate) can lead to inaccuracies and delay in both binning and picking up the merchandise.
This manual approach may result in some inefficiencies, inaccuracy, and employee and customer dissatisfaction. For example, disadvantages may include: delay resulting from order fillers placing the merchandise items in containers and recording the container location; delay resulting from the sales associate identifying and locating the correct container and then physically locating the merchandise item within the container; repeated back-and-forth travel by the employees; and possible increased wait time for customers.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods that can improve the delivery of merchandise items between employees or areas in a shopping facility.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.